Found this on a Google Image Search for "floppy boobs"

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter released their list of cinema’s biggest bombs of 2011 so far (based on production budget {not including marketing} minus worldwide gross). Considering one of them was the Jodie Foster-directed Beaver, it’s a miracle I managed to make it through this entire headline without using the phrase “Jodie Foster’s Beaver flop.” Sites kill to own that kind of big-money search term. But that’s why I wear this diamond-encrusted necklace that says “RESTRAINT.”

1. MARS NEEDS MOMS
Robert Zemeckis’ motion-capture pic was one of the most expensive bombs in Hollywood history, costing at least $150 million to produce and grossing $21.4 million at the domestic box office. Overseas, it didn’t do much better, grossing $17.6 million for a total $39 million.

2. YOUR HIGHNESS
The raunchy comedy, set in medieval times, didn’t go over well with audiences, even if it starred newly anointed Oscar winner Natalie Portman (along with James Franco and Danny McBride). Costing $50 million to produce, the film earned $21.6 million domestically and a paltry $3 million overseas. [Editor's Note: I liked it, and I'm not ashamed to say it.  It was a throwback to dumb comedy before dumb comedy became Kevin James mugging and falling down. But as they say, this is why we can't have nice things.]

3. ARTHUR
The remake of the classic Dudley Moore comedy failed to rustle up many laughs, topping out at $33 million domestically. Starring Russell Brand, Helen Mirren and Jennifer Garner, “Arthur” did even less overseas, earning $12.7 million for a global total of $45.7 million. The production budget was reportedly $40 million.

4. PROM
“Prom,” earning a mere $10.1 million at the domestic box office, was the first movie greenlit by newly installed Disney chairman Rich Ross to hit theaters. It’s the lowest grossing studio film of the year so far, but luckily for Ross, “Prom” cost only $8 million to produce.

Rich Ross is the same guy who killed The Proposal 2, Wild Hogs 2, and a Robin Williams vehicle called “Wedding Banned,” and for that he earns my undying respect.

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"TURN IT SIDEWAYS!"

Troubling news out of Sundance today, friends. It seems that Channing Tatum’s film The Son of No One has been met with less than stellar reviews. In fact, people walked out of its very important screening, including a number of studio execs. There’s just no respek in this Hollywood game these days.

The film, about a young cop (Tatum) who finds himself embroiled in controversy that could tear his family apart, features heavy star power, including Ray Liotta, Al Pacino, Katie Holmes and Tracy Morgan, which indicates that there should still be a demanding market for Son, despite people crapping all over it yesterday.

C-walk out of my theater, Hollywood Reporter…

Though the theater wasn’t full, the room was crowded with acquisitions execs wanting an early look at the film. Reps from Samuel Goldwyn, Paramount, Summit, the Weinstein Co., Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group, IFC Films, Morgan Creek, Screen Media, Miramax and Relativity made it into the theater by the film’s opening credits.

Some of them, however, were gone well before the end credits. In addition, enough regular audience members left early for one observer to describe it as an “exodus.”

Baloney. Pure baloney. I’m so angry right now that I could just cuss. But I won’t because I know that this movie is going to be a success. Even worse, I’m going to have to explain this to my good friend C-Tates, because he actually sent me this link with the following message:

“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH BOYYYYYYYYY, C-TATES IS DA MUTHA F*CKIN’ BOMB, YO!”

Poor guy. At least the poster lists some of the more positive reviews…

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Macgruber mounted a big marketing push over the weekend, with ubiquitous internet ads and some viral  sites that I thought were actually pretty funny.  They took a concept I thought was really dumb to begin with (I never liked that sketch) and turned it into something I actually wanted to see.  But once again we learn that us internet cool kids aren’t the people driving the market, it’s that silent, drooling majority that make Jay Leno the number one late night host and Two and a Half Men the highest-rated sitcom (I tried to watch it on the plane the other day. Got through five minutes.).

Final tally? Macgruber: $4.1 million.  Letters to Juliet (not even in its opening weekend): $9.1 million.  Of course, I didn’t get around to seeing Macgruber yet either.  I was still planning to. Maybe it’ll bounce back?  Even if you think it looked stupid, it’s rough watching a broad, R comedy lose to Just Wright, the Queen Latifah rom-com.  WOOF. BoxOfficeMojo described Macgruber‘s opening as “a fraction of Undercover Brother and not much better than Delta Farce [the Larry the Cable Guy movie] among past comparable May titles.”

F*ck.  It hurt me just to type that, and I didn’t even work on the movie.  Elsewhere, Shrek Forever After won the weekend with $71.3 million, 61% of which came from 3D screenings.  When you factor in the even higher-priced IMAX showings, it was the lowest-attended opening for any Shrek movie, and down 59% from the last one.  You know what this means don’t you?  Time for a reboot with a younger voice cast.  Anyway, it’s a definite victory for $20 movie tickets.  (*sigh*) (*fart*)

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Now that the dust has settled on the weekend’s box office, Delgo (trailer here) has officially locked up the worst opening ever for a film in wide release.  It opened on 2,160 screens, earning $511,920 for a per-screen average of $237 a screen, shattering the previous worst, P2, which had a $937 average.

This is all too bad because the story of the making of “Delgo” has the makings [sic] of a great Hollywood underdog story. 36-year-old entrepreneur Marc Adler decided he wanted to direct and produce a $40 million computer animated kids’ flick completely independent of Tinseltown behemoths like Disney and Dreamworks.

Starting in 2001, Adler and his small Atlanta-based animation company Fathom Studios toiled for years on a tight budget. They lined up an impressive, if eclectic, cast of voice actors including Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Val Kilmer, Malcolm McDowell, Kelly Ripa, and Anne Bancroft in her final role (she died in 2005). And when Adler couldn’t get a Hollywood studio interested in his movie, he raised eyebrows by releasing it himself through distributor-for-hire Freestyle Releasing. It was a huge risk; one that ultimately didn’t pay off. There wasn’t the sort of marketing budget needed to make a film stand out in the already crowded holiday movie season.

Another problem was the quality of the movie. Or lack thereof. The story — star-crossed lovers squaring off against an evil queen on a fanciful world divided between a reptilian people who can move rocks with their minds and a sprite-like folk who like dragons — borrows liberally from “Star Wars,” “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Dark Crystal,” just without the charm and intelligence. The script required the efforts of six, count ‘em, six screenwriters, including Adler. The critics trashed it, giving it a dreadful D average on Yahoo!, which proved to be lethal. [Yahoo]

Now, this brings up an important point.  People are always telling kids to follow their dreams no matter what and you can make anything happen if you just keep on believin and yadda yadda yadda.  But as this illustrates, sometimes when everyone tells you something isn’t a good idea, when no one wants to distribute your movie or produce your song, sometimes you should take that as a cue to do something else.   (top 10 all-time worst openings after the jump)

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The box office figures I posted yesterday were based on studio estimates. Revised figures were released today showing that Speed Racer actually bombed even worse than first reported. Originally listed in the number two spot with $20.2 million, it was downgraded to third with $18.6 million. But it’s okay, Speed Racer, no matter what place you’re in, I’ll always think of you as a big number two.  

Some are even accusing Warner Bros. execs of deliberately overestimating the gross. Nikki Finke quoted a studio exec yesterday saying, "That’s a very aggressive Sunday estimate to try and claim 2nd," and it’s looking like he was right.  Today she reports that star Emile Hirsch has fired his agent.

Moreover, expect "industry analysts" to quantify and break down Speed Racer‘s failure into truthy little chunks that have nothing to do with reality.  It was a bad idea for a movie, that’s all that needs to be said – get over it, it’s not the Iraq war. And anyway, the directors and the majority of the cast are respected and established stars – this isn’t going to hurt them that much.

The real loser here is the chimp. You just know someone’ll write a movie starring a former High School Musical castmember and a chimp, or a movie about chimps saving the rec center. Some exec’ll greenlight it, but then he’ll be like, "Hold on, are we talking the Speed Racer chimp here?  Oh, forget this – that chimp’s box office poison."